Bloggers and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Travel Day

Some posts on this site contain affiliate links, meaning if you book or buy something through one of these links, I may earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you!). Read the full disclosure policy here.

Anyone who has traveled for any length of time knows that travel is definitely NOT unicorns and rainbows all the time. Sure, it's fun and life-changing and can be amazing. But, as with any situation where complete control is out of your hands, things can easily go wrong when it comes to travel.

Whether it's canceled flights, bad weather, sickness, scams, or something much worse, bad travel days are inevitable the more often you travel.

In honor of the release of my friend Lauren Juliff's book about travel mishaps (called “How Not to Travel the World“), I asked a bunch of travel bloggers to talk about some of their WORST travel days and experiences on the road.

Make sure you read to the end, because I'm also giving away 2 copies of How Not to Travel the World!

Volcano Violence

It was a beautiful morning in Quito, Ecuador when I decided to hike the Pichincha Volcano. This 15,000-foot monstrosity, most notably known as an acclimatization hike, would take the majority of the day, but with good weather on hand, I would be able to take my time and fully appreciate the wondrous landscape.

In typical fashion, I was running later than expected. I should have gotten a start at around 8am, but instead it was 10 by the time I finally began my ascent. What I didn’t realize is that, at this altitude, and in this particular region, weather conditions can change in the blink of an eye.

I was nearly to the summit when it happened: thick pellets of hail began to stream from the sky. A thick fog enveloped the entire volcano, and I couldn’t see more than 10 feet in front of me. The rain was intense, and huge strokes of lightning cracked through the bleak, dark sky.

Being within 30 minutes from completing the hike, I vowed to finish, no matter the weather conditions. But I just couldn’t shake the thought of the headlines:“American Tourist Struck by Lightning During Massive Hailstorm on the Side of a Volcano in Ecuador.” And what’s more, I was still going to have to climb down!

I returned only mildly injured, with a few scrapes and bruises, and covered in mud. I was soaked head to toe, and had received a veritable beating from the ice bullets. And since my camera died at the summit, I only had moderate proof of my experience that day. But the story still remains! (Click here to read the full story)

Gun Fights and Drug Busts

Maybe it was because the birds had stopped singing. Maybe it was because we were alone in no-man’s land. Or maybe it was the gunshots ricocheting off the valley walls that told us something was wrong up ahead. Hubbie and I were tackling the notorious Sani Pass between South Africa and the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. A road famed for its dramatic hairpins, we’d planned for plunging drops and treacherous weather, not bad guys and shoot-em-ups!

Skidding to a halt, our driver raised his substantial eyebrows in question. Did we want to venture on? It was a long way back to the border, and there were a couple of quad bikes with our names on at the top, so really we had no option but to continue. Besides, we wanted to know what was going on.

After the exchange of fire had ceased, we inched cautiously around the corner and I slid down into the foot well, wishing I’d packed spare underpants.

A lone policeman was standing in a cloud of lingering gun smoke beside an abandoned vehicle, his weapon trained at a pleading figure on the ground who was watching his accomplices flee the scene. Curiosity soon got the better of hubbie, who jumped out to assist the poor cop who had apparently forgotten his handcuffs. I played the girl card and stayed safe in my foot well. Had he taken leave of his senses? The bushes beside the road rustled and I felt sure the bad guys were there, ready to pick us off, one by one.

It turned out to be a couple of bemused goats!

In lieu of proper restraints, our driver sat on the captive until backup arrived, whilst hubbie went to examine the truck. The cocaine inside would have fetched millions, but the drug smuggler who had the misfortune to be caught was just the driver. A guy simply trying to feed his family with the small cut he would have made, and I couldn’t help but have some sympathy for him despite the crime.

We eventually continued our journey, both shaken and stirred, and I really could’ve done with those spare pants!

A Kitty Scorned

My flight into Barcelona was supposed to arrive at 12:30 am, but instead it arrived at 2:30 am. I was tired and cranky and eager to get to my hotel. As I picked up my bag from the baggage carousel, I noticed that it was wet. Damn airline, can’t even keep my bag dry, I mumbled to myself as I hopped in a cab to my hotel.

As I started unpacking, I noticed a smell, then realized it wasn’t just my suitcase that was wet, but that it was all my clothes too. It slowly dawned on me that this wasn’t the fault of a careless airline. but the work of a spurned cat that was giving me a clear sign that he was not happy that I was leaving him! Yep, my cat peed inside my suitcase, over all my clothes!

At 3:00 am I proceeded to hand wash my clothes in a tiny hotel sink using a combination of hotel soap and shampoo. For the record, it’s not very effective! The next morning I met my tour group in slightly damp clothes with a still faint smell of cat urine which I vainly attempted to cover by over perfuming myself!

A Bad, Bloody Day

After a miserable press trip to an island that will remain nameless and an 11 hour bus ride, we were fried. We were living on nearby Bali and were trying to make a decision on whether to change our flight home, or to try to make the most of our time away by sticking it out the two nights we had left. We made the decision to stick it out and found a cheap room on points at the Sheraton. At the time, a lot of personal stuff had been going on, and we were making some big changes. I thought we could use the few days of resort living to smooth things out.

Part of the “let's make the most of a bad trip” involved making our way into the warm water from our comfy lounge chairs. Eric got a head start and was floating in the water as I made my way in. The sandy bottom quickly gave way to the sharpest coral on the earth, in some very shallow water. Eric realized where he was and tried to stand up to wave me off.

When he waved me off, though, off came his wedding ring. Immediately I tried to join him so we could try to find the ring. But it was a lost cause. The coral was deep and sharp. We tried to feel around with our hands, while the tiny waves kept making us lose our balance. After a few minutes, we knew it was no use.

We carefully walked back out and realized what had happened. We were bloody from the coral – my knuckles and hands, feet, and knees. It was a mess. The security guards were helpful, at least. They helped me clean my wounds, reported the incident, and helped to look for the ring on the beach.

When we were firmly out of danger, and with bactine on our wounds, I sat down on the lounge chair and cried. I was not all that sad about the ring, per se. After all, we expected Eric would lose it in the first year, and instead he lasted 13 years with it. That alone was an accomplishment. It was just a sign to us when we were trying to make some big decisions about living in Bali, about friendships unraveling. This was the last straw. It was certainly a sign, and one of our recent bad travel days. (Read more here.)

Not As-Advertised

After a few weeks of mentally exhausting travel, I set off on an overnight tour known as the Vang Vieng Challenge looking for some fun. With two days of nonstop activities like hiking, abseiling, ziplining, camping, and a via ferrata (assisted rock climbing), I thought I was in for a treat. I love the outdoors and physical adventure and this one was jam-packed with excitement! Unfortunately, the experience was nothing like the description.

We bushwhacked through overgrown trails, tackling mud slides and leeches as we went. Trees sprung up out of nowhere in the middle of our zipline course and falling rocks were common while climbing on the via ferrata. In short, nothing went right. The appetizer to our dinner – fried maggots – was one of the best parts of the trip, which says a lot about the tour.

This trip was supposed to be nonstop thrill and instead it was one hour of fun buried under thirty hours of frustration. But, hey, you can’t win them all.

Malaria Surprise

When most people think of spending 3 nights in a beach hut on the shores of Lake Malawi in the famed Kandi Beach area, you would think it would be wonderful and that nothing could possibly go wrong. That’s what I thought… and then I came down with malaria. I woke up a few short hours after falling asleep to waves of severe nausea, hot and cold sweats, and general achiness. After several attempts at trying to vomit to make myself feel better, I finally managed to make a complete mess of the bathroom – at about 4am.

I found myself sleeping for the entire 9-hour truck ride from Kande Beach to Lilongwe, only to find my tour guides shipping me off to a private clinic in a taxi (that they had arranged and negotiated the price for), getting the news of my malaria diagnosis (and a number of bottles of pills), followed by getting extorted by the taxi driver – resulting in me having to pay nearly double the negotiated price!

And to top it all off, I’d been guaranteed by my tour guides that the campsite in Lilongwe had strong internet – good enough to Skype – only for me to arrive and find out the network was down and the Skype date I had arranged with my boyfriend 6 days prior was not going to happen. Cue the tears!

An Awful First Day

The first day I ever traveled solo became an extremely bad travel day. I landed in Rome, my head buzzing with all the possibilities of traveling in Europe for the next two months. Little did I know, my excitement was going to be short lived.

I walked up to the ATM to get some cash and entered my pin. I stood waiting to get my cash. One minute went by, then another. After about five minutes and still no cash, panic set in and I knew I was in trouble.

I walked to another ATM and shakily inserted my card. After a moment a message appeared on the screen, “You have withdrawn your daily limit.”

I quickly exchanged what little cash I had, grabbed a cup of coffee to shake off the jet lag, and thought about my next move. I decided to grab a phone card and call my bank directly. I went through three phone cards before I found one that worked.

The bank representative tried to convince me that I had indeed withdrew money. In turn I tried to convince him that I most certainly had not and if they didn’t fix this I would spending the next 24 hours roaming the airport. They wished me well in my airport wanderings but left me penniless.

However, due to the kindness of strangers, this bad travel day worked out nicely in the end.

Camera Boo-Boo

In 2012 we took off on a great train trip through Europe. One of our stops was Colmar, a real fairy tale town. Walking through town one night, we came upon a traditional dance troupe putting on a show. People were standing all around, and I was in the front, camera at the ready, when I heard something click. And as I brought the camera up to my face, my brand new wide angle lens came away from the camera and plummeted to the ground. This all happened in slow motion of course, and as I watched it happen I let out a screech, the crowd staring at me at this point gave me a look of empathy. I picked up the lens and we scurried to the hotel. The glass wasn’t broken but the attaching mechanism was badly damaged.

This story does have somewhat of a happy ending. Arriving at our next stop, Munich, after several beers, Tim got the courage to try and fix the lens and did a wonderful job. It’s still not 100% but it’s functional.

Stomach Rebellion

I recently signed up to volunteer on a small island where the living conditions were rustic to say the least. On my third day there, my stomach decided to turn on me and called on a mass evacuation of my insides. It’s not nice when you have a proper toilet, but it’s even worse when you are using an outdoor toilet with a sheet door and tarp walls. Oh and there could be giant centipedes and huntsman spiders in there at any moment!

At night, there wasn’t any electricity, so you needed to wear a head torch in order to navigate. Of course I forgot mine when I had to make about the 10th mad dash to the toilet. On the way there, I stubbed my toe on a protruding root and ripped the tip wide open.

I was fine at first until the blood loss hit me. I broke out in a cold sweat and became very lightheaded. Then my stomach thought this would be a great time to release itself AGAIN!

I had to be helped to the toilet since my legs were too weak to hold myself up, AND someone had to stand outside and make sure I didn’t pass out. So embarrassing!

Guarded Gates

I lived in Panama when I was young, and over the years I’ve gone back to visit old friends. One summer I spent three weeks hanging out in the city with two of my girlfriends.

One of the few nights we decided to hit the town, one of the girls (the only one who still lived in Panama) decided to leave early. No problem, we thought; we could take care of ourselves. Until we found it nearly impossible to find a taxi to take us back to Fort Clayton (the old military base turned residential zone). Once we finally did, the shady guard at the front gate stopped us. He insisted we step out because we didn’t have our passports. The driver looked back us, noting that we were two oblivious young girls. After exchanging a few words with the guard, he hit the gas so hard it took our breath away. I’m not sure what the guard would have done if we had gotten out of the taxi, but I can’t imagine it would have been anything good. We made it to my friend’s house safe and sound, but I’ll never take that risk again.

A Long, Long Walk

We'd just finished a few days in Capacobana in Bolivia, and were preparing ourselves to explore the Uros Islands in Peru. This meant a little border crossing and a short bus ride into Puno.

We left our hostel early one morning to a warning from the owner that the roads were closed while an industrial dispute took place. Thinking she was just trying to keep my group of 8 at the hostel an extra night, we decided to take our chances and headed out.

When we arrived in Illave, we discovered the main road (the only road) through the town had been covered with all sorts of rubbish from tyres, barbed wire and even entirely destroyed vehicles. Not a single car was capable of passing through. We had to walk.

Walking across the town took us about 2 hours.

My group and I love a good hike though, so didn't find that to be an issue.

What caused the real pain for us was the diarrhea.

It's a very unpleasant experience having to walk for 2 hours, carrying all your gear, and constantly feeling the need to rush to a toilet, even for those of us who hadn't caught the bug yet!

Brussels Biking Disaster

They told us not to go. “Steer clear of Brussels; it’s big, not very nice, and it’s horrible for biking.” We had every intention of heeding the advice of many, but the Beer Mecca of Cantillon was lulling us in too sweetly, like the Sirens who lured sailors to their doom.

The day started off pleasant enough – in fact, it was great. We had secretly been led to a Belgian chocolate dream filled with free tasters. But, when we got to the city, things took a turn for the worse.

As we cycled into Brussels, the bike lanes disappeared. On a narrow street, I pulled over to let a van go by but my shoe got stuck and I fell over. The street was busy and everyone stopped to see if I was okay. I would have cried from the pain if it wasn’t for all of the attention. A French-speaking Belgian woman pulled me into her apartment and doctored me. Neither of us shared a language, but I was overwhelmed by her kindness. I set off with wary but renewed hope.

Later we tried to navigate a very busy street and thought the sidewalk would be better. As I got onto the sidewalk, though, my bike slipped and I fell over again. My bandaging from earlier protected any new scrapes, but twice in one day was too much. I spent the next half-hour crying on the sidewalk. I eventually got back up. The next day we decided to train out of Brussels instead of riding.

Bad News on a Plane

Celebrating our first class upgrades after our previous flight was cancelled mid-air due to a plane malfunction.

I was half-asleep as I listened to my audiobook. Through a haze of knowledge by osmosis, something didn’t feel right. I leaned towards my wife and whispered, “I think the plane is turning around.”

“No,” she said. “I’ve been on a plane that had to turn around before, and we did not turn around.”

I leaned back in my seat only to be nudged by the passenger next to me. “Is it me, or did we just turn around?”

“We just turned around,” I said.

Moments later the captain yelled into the intercom. “Are you listening to me back there?”

The announcement that one of the plane’s engines was running low on oil pressure followed shortly. We were returning to Charlotte to await further news on if we’d make it to St Lucia for the first night of our brief babymoon.

As we approached CLT, the plane started to circle again. The captain came back on and said that the plane was too heavy to land. We were burning fuel until our landing weight was right.

The German pilot across the aisle confirmed that this was bad.

I was no longer concerned about missing the first night of our babymoon. I was concerned about living through the next hour.

After another thirty minutes, the captain announced that we would be landing and it would not be an emergency landing. We ended up arriving in St Lucia a day late, but at least we made it.

A Hawaiian Nightmare

My friend and I took a trip to Oahu for six days and it turned into a slight disaster. First, she lost her credit cards before she got on the plane and we had to use my account for everything. Then, I was so tired when I got on the airport shuttle in Hawaii that I hit my head, HARD, on the door of the van. My head was throbbing for days, and on top of that I had the worst cramps of my life.

We also didn’t rent a car, so we took the bus around the island. We were shoved against sweaty, smelly people and almost got run over several times. Not to mention the bus missed our stop several times.

Hanauma Bay was a complete bust, and we wasted a lot of money for water that was impossible to snorkel in and our gear was non-refundable. My phone broke on the North Shore, nothing in our hotel room worked, and Waikiki tourists were the worst.

On top of everything, my friend and I discovered we wanted completely different things and were irritated with each other the whole time.

The Queen of Travel Misadventures

It was the night before I was due to enter Laos when I ate my first cockroach. Accidentally, of course, because I was drunk.

Little did I know that what I’d assumed would be a fun anecdote to tell friends for years to come instead marked the start of my worst travel experience.

I crossed into Laos the following morning and clambered on to a slow boat; I was going to be riding it down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang over the next two days. On the final morning, I was taking a nap when an elderly Laotian woman died of malaria. I had to spend the next six hours sitting beside her body and listening to the sobs of her grieving husband.

My traumatising experience didn’t end there. After deciding to splash out on some fancy accommodation to recover, I ended up in the guesthouse from hell. First, I was locked out of my room and watched as the owner hacked off the doorknob with a machete. Then, I was locked inside my room because I no longer had a way of opening the door. Several hours later, after somebody finally heard my cries for help, I changed rooms to one that was filled with bugs. It was only available room left in the guesthouse and Luang Prabang has a curfew; this was my only option.

Cockroaches kept running over my face as I tried to sleep, so I ran outside and curled up in a ball on the ground. When two backpackers offered to let me sleep in their room, I was grateful for their generosity and agreed. I must have been out for an hour when I awoke to find one of them sexually assaulting me. I made to escape, only to discover they were staying in my old room: the one without a doorknob.

Somehow, I escaped unscathed, and the following morning, I checked in to one of the most expensive hotels I’ve ever stayed in.

Lauren's “incidents” are plentiful – she really *might* be the unluckiest traveler I know. But, her misfortunes come with a silver lining – she wrote a book about them (along with how travel helped her get over crippling anxiety and learn how to eat scary foods like rice)!

The book is a fun, easy, and funny read, and goes to show that, despite the bad days and misadventures, travel has the power to transform just about anyone.

And now it's YOUR turn – share one of your worst travel days/experiences in the comments below!

More from my site

Get to Know Me

I'm a former-journalist-turned blogger from a small town in Ohio. I've been blogging about travel since 2010, and seek to inspire people to be curious and adventurous and find ways to fit more travel into the lifestyle they already have.

Interesting read! My most horrible and challenging moment on the road has been at Srinagar airport when I was waiting for my flight with my boarding pass in my pocket…I hear a buzz that ‘all flights are cancelled..” the runway was damaged due to a landing plane’s tire burst…and all flights were cancelled…argh! I was traveling alone…had no internet connection, no phone connectivity!

Not a horror story like some of the above, but one bad travel day was on a weekend trip to visit a good friend in Cedar City, UT – a.k.a. the middle of nowhere in airport terms. First the flight cost nearly $500 for barely 3 hours. On the 5pm flight home, the tiny connector plane encountered an error message that required a mechanic to approve. “The” mechanic lived over 40 minutes away. Waiting in the one-room airport for several hours I knew the previously ample connection time in Salt Lake City was getting tighter and tighter. When we finally landed in SLC, a few of us sprinted across the airport (its never the adjacent gate) only to find them closing doors. The agents booked us on the soonest flight to a different destination, two hours from home, otherwise we’d have to bunk up for the night. Luckily my husband could drive to get me and I offered another passenger a lift to the original airport to pick her car up. We got there at 2am…work was fun the next day! On top of that when I called my friend in the morning, I found out her car had broken down on the way home from dropping me at the airport and she had to wait over two hours for a tow truck with her two 3 month-old twins in the car!
We’ve been planning another visit…but this time I’m considering driving the 10 hours and saving the money 🙂

Oh wow – some of these are really gnarly!! My worst was definitely catching what I thought was terrible food poisoning in Peru.. after being violently ill and delirious with a high fever for days, I was so weak that I couldn’t stand up for more than 5 minutes at a time for another 10 days. (I now know after catching dengue fever here in Honduras that it’s pretty likely I had dengue!) At the time, I was very happy my boyfriend agreed to move from a crappy hostel to a fancy surf resort for me to recover!!

Great post! My worst experiences have probably been due to my naivety, but luckily nothing bad has happened. I stupidly hugged a local guy goodbye after walking with him for a while. I assumed it was just a handshake but he pulled me close and coped a feel of my boob then left. I didn’t feel intimidated, but I had been feeling wary of him and should have followed my gut instinct, instead of being ‘polite’. Mostly I felt stupid and annoyed with myself for not realising, but I do know I’m unlikely to fall for it again!

I was visiting Spain and traveling solo for the first time. When I arrived I picked up my rental car to drive to my hotel. On the way, I got a little lost on the highway and stopped at a hotel/ shopping area that was lit to ask directions. When I got back into the car confident that I knew where I was going, a guy ran up to the rear side of the drivers side of the car screaming that his friend needed help. I tried to direct him to the hotel to get assistance as I was not going to leave the safety of the car. Apparently while I was turned to try to direct this ” panicked” guy, another guy had opened the passenger door and stole my purse with my passport, credit cards, cash and phone. When I arrived at the hotel I began to panic once I realized what had happened. The hotel staff was amazing!!! They really did help me with the police report and notifying credit card companies. It was a lesson that I won’t forget and even at home I don’t leave my purse on the front seat anymore!

I haven’t had a huge day of cumulative bad events like many of these stories. I just have lots of little stories- like the day I split my eyebrow open just before getting on an overnight train in Vietnam, or the time we got stranded by our taxi driver at 1am in Phuket, or the time I vomited in my host family’s car for 2 hours straight…

I got sick a handful of times during my travels but the worst one I will always remember was having in Colombia. I was extremely weak for a whole week, I couldn’t walk up the stairs or eat anything. I ended up really dehydrated in a local hospital. The first diagnose was Malaria. It took me a month to finally feel like myself again. And that happened 3 weeks into my 7 month long journey across South America.

After reading these, none of my bad days traveling seem so bad anymore. Though, I did get a really bad case of food poisoning in Malaysia. While my insides were trying to come out, I had to take an hour long train and then a two hour long flight back to Indonesia. I felt like I was dying.

This post just proves that travel arent always a vacation! My worst mishap was in the Philippines. The sea looked so calm when we boarded the small falua and it would only take about an hour to reach the main island so I wasnt worried at all but I still took my meclizine for my motion sickness just to play safe. For the next 40 minutes we were fighting our way through 10 ft waves and the falua was rocking all over the place. Every one was reaching for the huge bucket and when it was about to be passed to me, my seatmate grabbed it and started vomitting. I couldnt wait for her so I started vomitting into my hands and by batch, placed all the goo into the bucket. By the time we reached shore, I was so light headed that I needed to lie on the pavement for a good 30 min rest.

I love these! Love Lauren’s writing and certainly would love the read.

Must say one of my worst was when I was catching a midnight bus from Nice to Barcelona. The hostel gave me mis-directions to the bus stop, saying it had changed where it picked passengers up from.

We walked around nice with suitcases for at least 3 hours trying to find the bus stop, no one could understand or speak English and the ones that could gave us even more confusing directions. No hotels around knew what we were talking about by the “changed bus stop” In the end, we missed our bus and had to find a budget hotel for the night at 2am. Being in Nice this wasn’t easy. The next morning we went to Eurolines to be told the bus stop had never changed its spot.

Oh noooo! That’s awful! I also had a bad experience at a bus stop in Nice! My hostel told me that the bus started running at 6am. But it turns out it didn’t start running until 7, so I sat there for an hour and got flashed twice by this creepy old French dude. 🙁

Our worst day travelling is hands down our boat trip in Cambodia. We were staying in the town of Sihanoukville on the coast. Six of us in our group decided to do a day trip to nearby Koh Rong island. Half the group went on a day long dive trip, the rest of us stayed on the beach. Those of us on the beach went back to the jetty around 4PM, to meet the divers to make sure we got on the 5PM ferry back to the mainland. The ferry came and went, but our friends didn’t. They rocked up after 6PM, and there were no more ferries. We were told by the locals ‘no problem, stay on Koh Rong’ but our tour bus was leaving at 6AM the next morning and we insisted on being taken back. After an hour of fussing they finally arranged a much smaller boat for the six of us to return. It was fine at first – until it got dark. Pitch black with the biggest swell and a captain who clearly did not know how to steer. The 1 hour trip that morning turned into over a 3 hour return trip, in pitch black, with monstrous swell. We all thought we were going to die. To top it off, I spent 2.5 of the 3 hours with my head in a plastic bag, vomiting the entire contents of my stomach. And I only had the one bag… so I had to keep sticking my head in it vomit. It was not nice. When we finally got back to the port – thank god – we realised that we were abandoned there with no way to get back to town. It was more than an hour before someone organised a truck – the type they use to transport cattle – to pick us up.
It was not a good day…

My ‘bad’ travel experiences don’t even begin to compare to those amazing stories but we did have one experience which we expected to turn out much worse than it did. We were road tripping from Johannesburg to the Kalahari Desert, Botswana in a true 4×4 kitted out for a Safari adventure – roof tents and all. Not long after we had crossed the border into Botswana, whilst driving on the highway we came across a Police Check Point in the middle of nowhere! Truly, the middle of nowhere. From past experiences and stories about the police in South Africa, we were preparing ourselves for the worst, quickly thinking how to get out of the situation if it turns bad.

We pull over, the police ask the 2 guys to step out of the car and follow them to the tent. Us girls, left behind in the car, were starting to worry. After about 5 minutes the guys come back, smiling.

Turns out the Police had just wanted to speak to them about the Importance of Tyre Safety, asking if we knew what safe tyres look like vs. bad tyres. They even offered them tea! Safe to say that one small interaction with local police made us love Botswana even more!

My first long-haul trip (to Peru with a group) gave me a taste for travel, but also my first taste for mishaps! On our first day my roommate and I got horribly lost in Lima, and suddenly noticed we were being stared at by a large group of men on the other side of the road. As two very pale, very tall women, we really stood out. Luckily I managed to flag down and negotiate with a taxi driver to get us back to our hotel. On the plus side, nothing bad actually happened and it made me realise how good my Spanish was!

And then a few days later I decided to eat some seafood … and got horribly sick. But I still managed to get through a boat trip to the Ballestas Islands (our guide told me to sit at the back and just throw up over the side if I needed to!)

Most of our travels have been wonderful, even my fantastic knack for getting lost has always given us some grand adventures. However, one airplane flight will go down as the worst ever! We had been up all day, flew from Cambodia to Korea at midnight,then stayed up to go on a tour of Incheon and Seoul. By the time we were on our flight from Korea to California, we had been up over 24 hours. I waited until after the dinner service had been removed before leaning my seat back, but when I did lean back, I got a sharp smack in the head by the little old lady in the seat behind me. My grandson and the young lady on my other side were both leaned back as was the gentleman in front of me. I put my seat back up thinking she must be still eating, but after a bit I really needed to rest so slowly leaned my seat back. Again a sharp slap on the head. I (being the polite, docile lady I was raised to be) put my seat back up and again waited a bit. When I put my seat back next, she put her hand around my seat to smack me, but scratched my grandson. Whoa, now the tiger was out of the cage! I stood up yelling at her that she needed to keep her hands to herself and if she touched us again, I would make sure that she never touched anyone! I don’t know if she spoke the same language as I did, but I think she got the message. I was able to put my seat back and not be disturbed. Thank goodness, since my seatback entertainment was not working either!

I was awoken in the middle of the night by what sounded like a sword fight in the alley. Florence was experiencing a heat wave and I’d slept with the window open. A few moments later I heard shouting in the hallway and someone pounding on my door. After a few panicked seconds where I wondered if we were under attack, I opened the door to see Italian firemen pulling hoses through the hall which was filled with smoke – the hotel was on fire! Without thinking, my friend and I raced out the door and down the stairs to join all the other hotel guests on the front lawn. Only then did I realize that I was wearing just my underwear and a tank top. That was a very loooong night!

Oh wow! Is it weird that I actually find this post inspirational? I mean, it’s awful reading about all the things that could and do go wrong, but the overriding message is that, despite the bad days, everyone is still travelling. It’s about getting up, dusting yourself off, and chalking it up to experience before getting on with the real business of exploring the world.

It definitely sticks with you in some way though. I remember a truly awful night in Wellington, NZ. I’d been on the road on a group tour for 3 weeks, so I decided to stay in out of the rain and use the hostel pay-per-minute internet to check my messages. Staring at me out of the screen was a message from a friend back at uni, letting me know that another friend had committed suicide. I needed space on my own, but there was nowhere in the hostel communal areas or our shared dorm to find it, and everything around seemed to be closed. I ended up wandering around one corner of Wellington in the pouring rain, on the other side of the world from my support network. The friends I’d made on the tour were great about it, but sometimes you just need to be with someone who’s going through the same thing.

My worst travel day occurred in Ko Phangan roughly 11 years ago (I was backpacking through Thailand). My memory of it is a little fuzzy but I got something in my eye so quite naturally, I was freaking out (I had no travel insurance). The bungaloo owner had someone take me to the island hospital and… I’m not sure what kind of treatment I received. But I wore a patch over that eye for several days.

As it turns out, my eye healed perfectly. But the situation was a bit nerve-wracking.

Great post and a great read. I enjoy reading posts like this since travel isn’t always rainbows and bunny rabbits. I’ve had my share of bad days on the road and it’s good that I’m not alone. Thanks for posting this 🙂

When my husband & I went to Egypt we had an amazing time until we tried to get back to the airport. On the way to the hotel, we booked a cab to get us through all of the checkpoints and we asked the hotel to do the same on our way back. Instead, they called a cab of a friend of a friend of the staff, who was the worst driver ever. He drove erratically between lanes, almost hitting several cars, people, animals, you name it. He came close to hitting a couple who got married that night. The wedding caravan then surrounded us on the highway and stopped the car by barricading our cab. The people behind us were shooting above the car and the other drivers pulled our driver from the car and circled around him as we looked on from the back of the cab. Luckily a couple of older men stopped the shoving match and put our driver back in the car. We got to the airport finally to find out the airline overbooked the flight and we wouldn’t be able to get out until 12 hours later. On top of that, we both were sick from something we ate. Not the best of travels that day!

The drug bust one reminds of me of border crossing on my Balkans trip last year. A guy was pulled over by Serbian border officers and his car was searched. The not so smart thing was that he had a weed leaf decal on the side of his car.

My worst travel day: I had just graduated high school and my history teacher takes about 30 girls overseas every year. We were in Paris and were supposed to meet up with another group to go back to the opera house to meet the larger group. Apparently there was a miscommunication between the groups: one was at the top and one was at the bottom of the Sacre Coeur. So we were late and then we found out our teacher hadn’t made it back yet and we had to wait for her to get there. We were all starving by this point. Come to find out our teacher had gone back to the hotel and the restaurant had lost our reservations. So we ended up not eating til almost 9 oclock. Looking back probably not the worst thing that could happen to me while traveling but between that getting while visiting Versailles and our guide losing her wallet, Paris and France have left a bad taste in my mouth.

I love these stories – although I really shouldn’t take any pleasure in the misfortune of others 🙂

Other than several long hikes through cities because we’ve been confused about public transport, our worst travel experience was hubby’s collapse in Kenya on our penultimate night. He had to be dragged back to our room by security staff, and we used the last of our money for a doctor. He was diagnosed with dehydration caused by gastroenteritis – I’ve never been so anxious in my life (I was literally rehearsing how I would tell by in-laws that their son had died…). Luckily a day of bed rest, black coffee and no alcohol, and hubby was almost as right as rain…

Some of these stories are absolutely insane! Travel can be super stressful at times. I have had a lot of bad luck when it comes to flying. My family doesn’t even like flying with me anymore because I’m such a bad luck charm. It’s hard to remember a flight I was on that wasn’t canceled, delayed or something went wrong.

I also almost was almost in a a tragic van accident in Laos. There was a sick tourist in the back that kept throwing up and the driver wouldn’t pull over. Suddenly the tourist got extremely angry and tried overtaking the steering wheel to get the driver to pull over. We were on a steep winding highway over a cliff and everyone started screaming and some others were grabbing the sick tourist who was trying to overtake the steering wheel. It was a mess. A very terrifying, stinky, vomit ridden mess.

I really don’t have a bad day travel story. Probably the worst thing that happened was when I was in London trying to use the underground and had packed 2 suitcases and couldn’t get them up some stairs during rush hour. Someone had to lift them up for me and it was really embarrassing since it was obvious I was a tourist (and not a very smart one at that). Now I know to pack light.

Wow! some of these stories are hair-raising. I feel like such an unadventurous traveller next to these bloggers. I still can’t believe the husband who went to help with the drug arrest in South Africa. I would have killed my husband if he did something like that.

In Peru I was on a bus and witnessed a violent car jacking right next to me. Even though it didn’t happen directly to me, and the driver was ok, it was still super scary to see, and made me waaaaaay more cautious about everything and I spent the rest of that trip paranoid. But I still love Peru and would go back again!

Great reading the stories. Likely my scariest experience was getting hepatitis A in India in the 1980’s when traveling alone. Didn’t know what was wrong at first, high fevers,uable to keep anything down, fainted and hit my head on concrete. Went to a doctor and my eyes were yellow and liver so tender the MD couldn’t press on it. Took me month to get strong enough to travel. The Tibetan medicine worked great, but being alone and so ill was very scary!

These events always get me chewing on ideas: do we experience worst travel days or perhaps worst travel moments? Or do we perceive less-than-awesomeness because an aggregated string of events culminated in shitting our pants (or cats pissing in our luggage haha)?

It seems that a broad spectrum of our travel experiences could swing in either the awesome or less-than-awesome direction almost arbitrarily: one day the experience is an adventure and the next it’s super uncomfy.

We might all agree though that these bad—read: unexpected?—travel days/moments offer some of the most meaningful moments of our lives…moments etched into our characters, steeped in problem-solving, and fodder for some really fun story-telling (and book publishing!).

These moments are often the inspiration for subsequent trips and arguments to drag our our friends out of the cubicle to join us for the unexpected…

Very nice read!
Alas! When you travel long and hard, mishaps are bound to happen LOL! My blog is not even 2 years old but I’ve been travelling since BEFORE I went to university and did my GAP year!

I’ve fallen off the ski-lift whilst on the black ski run in the Czech Republic even though at the time I was only a blue skier!

I arrived at 3 a.m. for my “executive deluxe” room that I had already paid for in Delhi, only to be told to “go to the other hotel across the street” at the dead of night.
Needless to say. I didn’t!

I arrived at the only hostel on the Isle of Skye (at the time) to be told that the only private room they had, that I had reserved (‘cos of my son), was “no longer available” and we had to sleep in the managers’ office!

I was mugged by a bunch of children in Egypt and I had to ask a local stall-holder that I had bought something from previously, to lend me some money to get a taxi back to my hotel. My hotel keys, suitcase keys and purse were stolen so we had to break open the lock of my suitcase! The list could go on.
p.s. I paid him back the next day!

Thanks for sharing these stories! I have a flight related disaster… This Last year I travelled to the Philippines from my home for the year, South Korea. Travelling to the train station, en route to hopping aboard a train to catch my flight in the capital Seoul that evening, I checked my e-mails. The e-mail address was unknown and the subject mentioned a timetable, ‘why are school messaging me in the holidays?’ I wondered. But curious, I opened it. Luckily curiosity didn’t kill me, instead it saved me from a wasted trip to the capital! My flight was cancelled due to an ‘airplane situation’ no alternative offered, only a cancellation. The only alternative that sprang to mind was sky scanning for another flight. I found one, from the city I was in, Busan, leaving just over two hours from that point. I scrambled back onto the subway in the direction of Busan (Gimhae) International airport. The sky scan wouldn’t book online so I had to go inside. I used the airports free computers, thank you Korea for being so internet-generous, and booked the flight. A cheaper flight, somehow, and printed my details. I was way too cocky at this point, as the check-in desk didn’t have my details. Of course they didn’t, how could they, 10 minutes after I’d processed an online booking? So I checked the details, went to the Air China service desk and asked for help. I saw that I’d have to wait until the office opened, which, time difference allowing, meant I’d have to wait until 5pm (Korea time), around 15 minutes before the gate closed. I waited and waited, I couldn’t sit down, I couldn’t stop, I had to keep moving, as though moving and willing everything to be ok would make it so. I ate kimbap as a further distraction and loitered by the desk. 5pm struck and I called. There was an answer! The lady explained they couldn’t process the flight until they were open but that she could do it immediately, phew, thank you, phew. I waited a few minutes, the Air China desk guy had to kindly print out my itinerary, what a champ. Then with no sign of the previous smug look, I walked over to the check-in desk and hoped they might have me in the system. Yes, you’re in. I was in, so was my baggage, I made it.
The same trip, on my return flight from Manila, I was so tired/hungover (definitely self-inflicted) and really sad (due to personal circumstances) that I faffed around in the airport and neglected organising myself. I had my nails painted with just over an hour until my flight was leaving. Then panicked that I’d lost my ticket. Found it. Then remembered the Philippines charge a departure tax, my cash amounted to 0 PHP. I questioned the security guy – can I pay by card? No, he replied. I suspsected he hadn’t understood my panicked babble, but went off to the card machine anyway. Which didn’t accept either of my cards. I ran back, nearly in tears, pleading to pay by card. Which I did. Stamped and through, yet it was too late. The plane was 10 minutes away from the departure time but closed. The doors were sealed and ready to deliver the passengers, me not being one of them. The attendant had no sympathy, I believe she searched around the departure lounge for me. I understood. I got it. I left and went off to book another new flight. (In contrast, the missed flight lead me to spend time with an impeccably polite guy on the information desk who helped me to find the best flight, with his iPad.) This then sent me to a new city, en route to Busan, for a night’s sleep, I e-mailed my best friend in England as I was terrified of arriving there alone, but luckily found a hotel deal from the airport, I was annoyed with myself for taking the easy option but I also forced myself in exhaustion to not care too much). Thank you for offering the competition and providing a platform for everyone’s stories!

In 2011 I decided to visit Cartagena, Colombia. It truly is a beautiful, but I was hustled on a public beach and not having a good grasp of the currency, I allowed myself to be robbed blind. Then I was accosted as I was walking down one of the historic streets! Men don’t always no their boundaries. It sounds bad and it is bad but it hasn’t stopped me from seeing the world. Brilliant post and thank you for sharing the giveaway! 🙂

I can really relate to the bad in-flight experience story… virtually the same thing happened to me, but to a slight lesser degree from the sounds of it. And with the same result: still trying to get over that! Fortunately I’ve had really great flying experiences ever since (knock on wood), and I think facing my fears by flying more is actually helping…

Great read! I always get so worried that this stuff will happen to me. On my first flight by myself (and I was terrified of flying), I missed my connecting flight because the first flight was delayed due to the pilot being drunk and having to find a new one (I overheard the desk, but they said maintenance issues over the intercom, haha). I had rushed to the airport after college finals, so the whole day was stressful. I knew I was going to be stuck in Chicago overnight. I went up to the attendant desk when I got off the first flight to reschedule, and I don’t know why (still, to this day), but the lady at the desk started screaming, cussing, and going off on me for no reason. I was already so stressed that I broke down crying, and a pilot from a different airline who happened to be on my flight jumped to my defense and started telling her that airlines should never treat people like this. Families came up and hugged me, asking if I was alright (I was 18 and looked 15 at the time). It literally traumatized me. I did not sleep all night and just sat in the airport Not to mention, it took my mom 4 hours on the phone to get me on a flight within the next 24 hours (they were supposedly all full, and when I got on my flight the next day, there were only maybe 5 out of 100 seats full….). And then they lost my luggage. So that was a whirlwind of a first solo flying experience haha

Wow, some of those are pretty epic. Is my worst travel day my very first adventure when my backpack went missing, never to be seen again? Or is it when I woke in Australia to a giant rat scurrying across the room? Or is it when I took a 36 HOUR bus journey on a baking hot bus with no air con?

Being taken by rogue taxi drivers and attempted extortion has to be among the worst experiences for me. I don’t know where my balls of steel came from on that day, but I stared them down, refused to pay, got out of the car, and walked until I got to the border. The guards were surprised to see someone on foot. It was one of the crossings where you’re stamped out of one country and a few kilometers later stamped into a new country

Wow! This topic has obviously struck a chord with many other travelers by the amount of comments and stories on the post! I know that Tom and I try and post the good before the bad to keep our blog positive, but it is so necessary to have an outlet to vent when these things happen! I know a lot of our non-traveler friends think we shouldn’t complain since we are ‘living the dream’, so this thread seems to be the best place for everyone to get it all out!

Its 1982 (pre-internet, no ATMs and no cell phones) and I’ve been backpacking and eurailpass-ing around Europe for two months with a friend. We go to northern France to get a ferry to Ireland to spend a few weeks on the last leg of our trip. We arrive in a small French town and find that the ferry is on strike. There’s no where to sleep but the train station bench. The next day we get a train to the next town over, where there’s supposed to be a ferry. It was cancelled without reason. We slept on the train station bench. The next day we get a train to the next town over (mind you, these towns are a day’s train ride away from each other) and a) there’s no ferry and b) we are out of francs (no such thing as a euro yet) and c) it is a French holiday and the banks are closed – no cashing travelers checks. We were fried and decided it was the end of the journey for us. We got an overnight train from there to Paris (not a sleeper car but sleeping on the train seat was way better than a train station bench). From there we took a train to Brussels, where the cheapest stand-by flights to JFK could be found. A night in the airport and then we were able to fly home. I’ve still never made it to Ireland.

21.30 flight from Bangkok to Bahrain with 1 hour 30 stop and onto London with Gulf Air. Everything seems fine on the plane, took my seat, got comfortable, 21.30 came and went, no announcement until 22.30, guess what, the plane had been delayed! Another 15 minutes and the plane took off, arrived at Bahrain 5 minutes before my connecting flight, the flight went. The check in staff were very nice, there was about 30 over people that had missed connecting flights. The next flight to London Heathrow was in 10 hours and we were taken to a hotel for a few hours. The downside was that I had someone picking me up from LHR and I couldn’t get in contact in time to warn him, he turned up at LHR and wasn’t there, cost me £100 to get back to my home. Sent an email to Gulf Air, no reply, I won’t be using them again!

Ahh! This is such a hilarious post, though I don’t mean to chuckle at anyone’s expense but I’ve been through so many similar instances like this! I wish I could have contributed, I would have possibly told of the time I was almost in a knife fight when we accidentally ended up in a Haitian brothel…or plenty of stories from the rickshaw run, and much more. We’ll have to swap some stories next time I see you in a random Irish pup somewhere in the world again! Haha.

[…] Travelling to a foreign country is always exciting and recently, I read a post from a young American blogger called Amanda, in which she shared travel stories that weren’t so nice. She called her piece: Bloggers and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Travel Day. […]

I think my worst travel day was our last day in Paris, Easter Sunday, we were racing around to see everything (including the Tour Eiffel) and I barfed on the Metro. I have no idea why, because I was fine before and after, but it happened! So, I’ve still never been to the Eiffel Tower!

I have been very careful ever since I was detained at my home airport by customs authorities for having a bottle of alcohol in my luggage. It took thirteen discomforting months to conclude my case. I learned my lesson though.

Get to Know Me

I’m just a small-town Ohio girl trying to balance a “normal” life with a desire to discover the world beyond my Midwest bubble. I aim to inspire people to find ways to fit more travel and adventure into the lifestyle they already have. Learn more about me here.